Incus
Community fork of LXD for managing Linux system containers and virtual machines.
HN commenters use Incus to sandbox AI coding agents1234 and as a Proxmox alternative for running VMs and containers, praising its profiles and simple permissions.5678 Few complaints come up; those raised are fiddly networking setup9 and the RAM cost of full VMs compared with containers.10
Why people recommend it
Agent sandboxing · 3
Commenters run AI coding agents in throwaway Incus containers or VMs to keep them isolated.
“I use something in between - a single Ubuntu VM, into which I spawn multiple Incus LXC containers for the agents.”
“Love Incus and I'm using throwaway restricted projects for testing.”
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“I use Linux Containers managed by Incus for working with Claude.”
VM and containers · 3
Manages both VMs and Linux containers, recommended over Proxmox and as a middle ground between containers and VMs.
“I recommend Incus over other hypervisor-oriented OS distributions (Proxmox, etc.)”
“Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox.”
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“If you want something of a middle compromise, I can't recommend incus enough.”
Dev and testing · 3
Used for per-developer environments and testing software across Linux distributions and Windows.
“Most of my team's development happens on beefy desktop machine in incus containers per dev+project”
“Just last month, I used incus to test a software package in 6 Linux distributions.”
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“Love Incus and I'm using throwaway restricted projects for testing.”
Configuration features · 3
Profiles, simple ID shifting, architecture tagging in clusters, and a good CLI and web UI simplify setup.
“Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox.”
“It’s my go-to recommendation for anyone wanting to setup a new virtualized environment.”
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“I recommend Incus over other hypervisor-oriented OS distributions (Proxmox, etc.)”
Low overhead · 2
LXC containers use far less memory than separate VMs.
“I use something in between - a single Ubuntu VM, into which I spawn multiple Incus LXC containers for the agents.”
Reliability · 1
One user reports rock-solid performance running it in production for most of a year.
“Rock solid performance.”
Caveats and dissent
Networking setup · 1
Networking can take some fiddling to configure.
VM memory cost · 1
Ubuntu VMs started by Incus use at least 512 MB of RAM each, which adds up across many sandboxes.
“I use something in between - a single Ubuntu VM, into which I spawn multiple Incus LXC containers for the agents.”
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor 6 mentions
- Docker Sandboxes – Disposable, isolated sandboxes for AI agents 4 mentions
- Docker is weird 2 mentions
- Self-hosted infrastructure with Incus OS 2 mentions
- Show HN: NSL – WSL for Linux 2 mentions
- Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus 2 mentions
Also written as Incus OS, incus, IncusOS. Data: incus.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 28
“I have recently discovered INCUS, very nice alternative to docker when a simple container is not sufficient”
“lxc forked it to incus to be community managed”
“You’re right, I’ll take a look at Incus.”
“A complete rethink of immutable infrastructure with a decade of additional hindsight.”
“That was my go-to for the past 8+ years as well.”
“I use incus/LXD for this”
“I use a similar setup, but using Incus and cli agents which I drive via ssh.”
“Love Incus and I'm using throwaway restricted projects for testing.”
“I use Linux Containers managed by Incus for working with Claude.”
“I use something in between - a single Ubuntu VM, into which I spawn multiple Incus LXC containers for the agents.”
“That should be reasonable security while having nice control for resources.”
“I spooled up an incus VM myself first”
“done in a sandboxed Incus container”
“Incus is great.”
“Rock solid performance.”
“Most of my team's development happens on beefy desktop machine in incus containers per dev+project”
“If you want something of a middle compromise, I can't recommend incus enough.”
“Check out LXC and the wider Incus set of projects”
“Running IncusOS on some local hardware with ZFS underneath is a phenomenally powerful sandbox.”
“I use Incus and Proxmox for this, more mature and have quite a bit built around them.”
“Just last month, I used incus to test a software package in 6 Linux distributions.”
“I am overall very pleasant with incus”
“I recommend Incus over other hypervisor-oriented OS distributions (Proxmox, etc.)”
“Incus is amazing”
“It’s my go-to recommendation for anyone wanting to setup a new virtualized environment.”
“Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox.”
“for homelab-like setup Incus OS seems more like a sweet spot”
“I have a fleet of containers on ubuntu + incus.”